Tag Archives: scholarly writing

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Academic writing tips from Stephen King

One of my favorite things to do to improve my writing is to read books on writing. I particularly try to read about writing when I’m struggling with it. Lately, I’ve been transitioning between two large writing projects and my writing has suffered as a result. To help get my writing chops back, I re-read Stephen King’s wonderful book “On Writing:  A Memoir of the Craft.” In his unique style, King packs a tremendous amount of writing advice in a couple of hundred pages. For today’s post, I want to share academic writing tips from Stephen King that will help you get your writing going again too.

Photo credit: Stephanie Lawton
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Practitioners need to learn scholarly writing

My entire career has been spent teaching and working with graduate students who are also practitioners. I’ve worked with college presidents and vice presidents far along in their careers as well as new master’s students just starting theirs. During this time, I’ve had many conversations with colleagues and students regarding how to best prepare practitioners in practice not focusing on research . Common questions include the necessity of theory, teaching technical skills, and the value of case studies for offering a glimpse into “real life.” One of the most common questions that come up in these discussions is the role of scholarly writing. Do students need to write a dissertation? What should that look like for practitioners versus future scholars? Should class assignments mirror real life problems or the abstract world of scholarship. In today’s post, I want to explain why I think practitioners need to learn scholarly writing.

Photo credit: A. Birkan Caghan

Scholarly writing is hard. It is easy to say some students can do it and other can’t. This simply isn’t true.

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Use the Bucket Method to Write Effective Literature Reviews

Writing a literature may be one of the most difficult aspects of academic writing. When I think back to my own dissertation or doctoral students that I’ve worked with, some of the greatest struggles were tied to the lit review. I believe there are many reasons for this. We all have a tendency to want to read more and more feeling like we never have a full grasp on everything that’s out there. There’s always one more article or book. Additionally, the genre of the lit review is so different from much of the writing that we are exposed to going through school. In fact, I would argue that many of the ways we learn to write cause problems when it comes to writing literature reviews. Over the years, I’ve come up with a method that I use for writing lit reviews and I want to share how you can use the bucket method to write better literature reviews.

Photo credit: Niels Linneberg

Once you have identified the topic for your literature review, you are ready to use the bucket method.

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How to Write a Scholarly Introduction

One of the biggest challenges that my students face is how to write a scholarly introduction to their papers and assignments. I’m not entirely sure of the reasons that students struggle with writing introductions, but it is the area that I find myself often providing help. There are many excellence resources on how to write a scholarly introduction and my personal favorite is Wendy Belcher’s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing. In today’s post, I’m going to modify some of Belcher’s advice with my own to provide five easy steps for writing a scholarly introduction.

Photo credit: Norlando Pobre

Fundamentally, the role of an introduction is to provide the necessary information for your reader to understand your argument. This sets up your argument for your reader.